


Fairytale Ending

by DrPearlGatsby



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), In spite of the title, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Post-TLJ, Rey Really Needs a Hug, Reylo Week 2020, Romance, a bit of the sads, say it with me: ANGST, this is pre-TROS but the ending is NOT happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:34:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23905492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrPearlGatsby/pseuds/DrPearlGatsby
Summary: Rey studiously does not look at Kylo Ren, trying to keep her voice even and her racing heart steady. “A warrior princess? Hm. Once, long ago, in a star system far from here, a princess lived on a sand planet.”(In which the force bond connects Rey and Kylo Ren as Rey is telling the orphan children on base a bedtime story, and the bedtime story begins to take on some resemblance to a story they both know.)
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 4
Kudos: 56
Collections: REYLO WEEK 2020





	Fairytale Ending

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the second day of Reylo Week 2020 to fill the prompt Mythology/Legends/Fairy Tales. Back at it again with the pre-TROS force bond angst--my apologies.

“Rey, tell us a story!”

It’s late evening on base, the orphan children are supposed to be turning in for bed, and Rey has in recent weeks made a name for herself among them as a great storyteller.

“A story!” she exclaims. “Well, only if you get into your bunks and promise to sleep after. Absolutely _no_ wookiee-yelling contests or battle reenactments—you hear me, Ruje?”

The young human boy gives her a serious nod, though she doesn’t quite trust him. He’s the ringleader, Ruje, and reminds her a little of herself.

“Right then!” Rey claps her hands when the kids—seven in total—have all settled onto their beds and covered themselves with blankets. “What should I tell you?”

As she speaks she feels a familiar sensation and her blood runs cold. Kylo Ren appears to be standing at the head of one of the beds, his back to her and his arms clasped behind him.

Rey concentrates hard, trying to will the bond closed, but the Force is determined to do what it wills. Ren—directly in her eyesight—twitches, just slightly, and begins to turn away from whatever he’s looking at. Quickly she looks away, taking in the children’s clamoring voices as they shout over each other—

“Tell us about a droid!”

“Tell us about a sand-rat!”

“No, tell us about a _warrior princess_!”

Rey studiously does not look at Kylo Ren, trying to keep her voice even and her racing heart steady. “A warrior princess? Hm. Once, long ago, in a star system far from here, a princess lived on a sand planet.”

“Jakku!” a twi’lek child named Oola calls out in excitement.

“A planet _like_ Jakku, but not Jakku itself,” Rey continues. “No, this planet had a secret layer of caves beneath the sand, caves like reflecting glass.”

“That was the palace!” the twins, Veera and Gin, chime in.

“It sounds like you don’t need _me_ to tell your story,” Rey says, beginning to stand up from the chair she’s sitting in.

“No, Rey, wait! We won’t interrupt you anymore. _Right_?” Ruje draws out the last word, looking around at the other kids, who take the hint and nod their assent.

“Alright then,” Rey says, settling back into the chair and spinning the tale: yes, the caves are the princess’s castle, and her people send her on a mission to an ice planet.

“Why?” Oola can’t help but ask, clapping a hand over her mouth as soon as she speaks. “Sorry,” she mumbles through her hand.

Rey chuckles a little, grateful for the interruption as she plans the next move. “To—”

_After all these months of silence, I thought you’d forgotten how to speak_. Ren’s words in her mind sting with bitterness.

She’s managed not to speak to him—not aloud, not in her mind—since Crait. Technically, she still _isn’t_ speaking to him. But now with her attention divided between preventing Ren from reading her thoughts and emotions in her mind and preventing the children from reading the same things in her voice and on her face, she finds she’s running low on stories. She blurts the first thing she thinks: “To save the prince.”

Ren crosses his arms; she registers the movement in her peripheral vision but refuses to react.

“The people of the ice planet had locked their prince away in a temple by himself. You see, the prince had a great power, but the people of the planet didn’t understand him, and the prince didn’t know how to use it. But the warrior princess was trained in magic, so the people of the ice world were begging for her help.

“It was a long journey to the ice planet, and the princess had only a droid to help pilot the ship.”

“What was the droid’s name?” Ruje asks.

Rey doesn’t bother to scold him; Ruje is a little mechanic-in-training, to be sure. “Err, it was called… BB-9.” The children giggle at this, having personally met Rey’s inspiration. Rey continues. “So the princess and BB-9 flew through many obstacles. Once they took a wrong turn and even piloted straight through an asteroid field!”

“No ship can do that!” Ruje protests.

“Are _you_ telling this story?” Rey corrects at the same time that she feels a faint recognition from Kylo Ren’s end of the bond. She considers telling them— _I knew a ship and a pilot who did just that_ —but ultimately she thinks better of it. “Finally, the princess reached the ice planet and journeyed to the temple. It was built like a maze to trap the prince inside, but growing up in the castle of mirrors, the princess had no problem navigating the maze.

“The prince was angry when he met her. ‘I’ve been alone for so long,’ he said. ‘Why should I trust you? My own people have sent me away. How do I know you’re not here to kill me?’” A spike of anger flashes through her mind—not her own but Kylo Ren’s. “The princess said, ‘I’m sorry for everyone who hurt you, but I know how to help.’

“The prince didn’t believe her and drew a sword made of ice. The princess had a sword, too, made of mirrors, and they engaged in a fierce battle. Even though the warrior princess had trained very hard, the prince was better at fighting with a sword. It seemed he was going to win once and for all, but the princess used her magic to cause an earthquake, and the temple began to rattle and shake. Suddenly, the floor split open and out came an evil demon the size of five men!”

The kids all gasp. Veera and Gin hang over the edges of their beds, and Oola hides half-under her blanket at the suspense of it all.

“‘You’ll both be my prisoners now!’ the demon said, snatching at them with his claws, so the warrior princess and the prince worked together, slashing at the demon with their swords until he was no more.

“Without the demon there, the temple shook and rattled with a second earthquake, and the prince and princess barely made it out. When they came out into the sunlight, the people of the ice planet were waiting for them.

“‘That demon was controlling our minds,’ an elder woman told them. ‘Dear prince, we’re so sorry. We never wanted to imprison you, but the demon said we had to.’

“The prince looked at his people with tears in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, too. I believed the demon when he said you hated me, and he turned my heart cold. Thanks to the princess, I know where I belong.’

“And that’s the story of how the warrior princess saved the ice prince.” Veera, Gin, and even Ruje have begun to drift off. The other children murmur their thanks to Rey, settling into their beds, but Rey is startled by a sudden sound the children don’t react to—the sound of clapping. She finally looks to Kylo Ren’s face and he stares her down, his expression stony as he gives a sarcastic round of applause. _And they all lived happily ever after_ , he sneers into her mind.

Rey forces a smile into her voice, moving toward the door and reaching for the panel to turn out the light. “Good night, children,” she calls softly as she leaves their room.

Out in the hallway, she stalks to her own room, Ren temporarily out of sight but clearly still connected to her, like a presence hovering just behind her. When she’s safely in her quarters, she secures the door before sidestepping Ren’s form to straighten up her own bed. It’s too early to go to sleep, but it’s something to do; she folds her pajamas and takes them to the closet that contains her sparse cloth possessions. There’s a second set of arm-wraps that probably needs washing, a tunic she can wear once more before she launders it, one set of soft pants she might—

“What about what happens next?” Ren speaks out loud, his voice cool. “Your story left much to be desired. What about the part where the prince’s parents said they didn’t want him? The part where his uncle tried to murder him?”

Rey doesn’t dignify those questions with answers, muddling around uselessly in her wardrobe.

“There’s the story of how the princess sliced his face open with her sword, or the part where the prince offered the princess the entire galaxy, and she said—”

“She didn’t _want_ the galaxy.” Rey pronounces quietly, halting her motions and taking a breath before turning to face him. “The galaxy was never the point.”

Ren takes up too much space in her small room—he’s so tall and broad, his dark, bulky regalia only adding to his already-imposing physical presence—but the emotion rolling off of him is nothing unfamiliar. It’s the same storm Rey has felt through the bond all these days since Crait, a roiling mass of pain and sorrow and what feels like fear.

It’s a standoff not unlike the silly game she sees the children play sometimes—Staring Contest. Ren just keeps looking at her, thinking he’s hidden his other emotions neatly under his anger, unaware of how the bond amplifies his inner thoughts. So too, Rey thinks, it must be for herself. Under her irritation, under the part of her that wants to rage at him is the part of her that remembers her vision: his face healed from the scar she’d given him, his lip split open and his hair disheveled in all directions but his wide, kind _eyes_ filled with unmistakable emotion—

She steps around him, moving to sit on the bed and resting her head in her hands.

“Rey,” his voice is low, threatening.

“Go away,” she says, taking a long, shaky breath. The man in her vision isn’t Kylo Ren but Ben Solo. He _will_ turn—she’s sure of it. But every time he intrudes into her space, every time the bond connects and it’s still Kylo Ren staring her down she feels heavy and tired.

There’s a part of Kylo Ren that isn’t hers to fix. She can’t fight his battles for him—not with the dark side, not with the past, and certainly not by escalating a shouting match in her bedroom. As sure as she is of her vision, she’s sure that it starts with him: first, he has to _choose_ the light.

She senses he’s still standing there and looks up again. His face remains impassive but for his lip, which trembles a fraction when she holds his gaze. He’s looking at her like he did in the throne room, when he’d asked her _please_ among the falling embers.

“I’ve done as much as I can today,” Rey says, turning her head to look away from him, her eyes landing on the blank wall beside her. In her vision he is beautiful, free, open; but the man standing improbably beside her bed is mean, calculating, stony-faced.

It breaks her heart.

His voice cuts in, loud and sudden in the quiet room. “You—”

“Please go.”

She’s uncertain whether it’s their combined desire to end the connection or a coincidence, but within mere seconds Rey feels the room brighten again, the mental strain of keeping her walls up easing as she realizes the bond has closed. For a long moment she stares at the blank wall until her vision blurs. With the back of her hand she scrubs the tears from her face. _And they all lived happily ever after_ , she thinks, repeating it like a plea, like a prayer.


End file.
